DOWNED YORKTOWN PILOT THANKS HIS RESCUERS--52 YEARS LATER

"There I was alone in a life jacket in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the whole Pacific Ocean"  Bennett Andrew

  It took him more than 52 years, but Andrews finally got the the chance to say thank you for his life.  The former pilot gave his thanks in person at a reunion of the World War Two crew that had rescued him, then briefly held him hostage for 5 gallons of ice cream before returning him to his carrier, the USS YORKTOWN.  Andrew had searched for years to find a record of the destroyer USS Ingraham, which had fished him out of the ocean on October 26, 1944, after his Hellcat Fighter crashed into the water. He had been up and down the East Coast and West Coast several times and could find no trace of the Ingraham.

  Two years ago, Andrew, a long time member of the US Navy found a tiny item in the VFW magazine announcing the reunion for DD 694, USS Ingraham.  After corresponding with reunion officials he learned that the ship had either been sold or given to the Green Navy years ago.

  Andrew was invited to this year's reunion.  There he met 22 of the crew "that were there the day they picked me up."   The crew gave him an inscribed book.  They also told him they had rescued plenty of pilots, but nobody else had bothered to track them down to thank them.

  Andrew's F6F Grumman "Hellcat" had been catapulted from the carrier Yorktown on that fateful day.  As he returned to the carrier, "my approach to land seemed good, but at the slow speed of the landing approach I was having trouble keeping my left wing from dropping.  The landing signal officer gave me the "cut" signal to land but I was drifting toward the port side of the deck, and I knew I was going to hit the edge of the deck and fall into the 20MM gun battery where the gun crew numbered 20 or so men," he recalls.

disobeys Landing Signal Officer to save 20 lives...

  "Rather than kill the gun crew, I then committed to 'unpardonable sin.'"  A pilot is never to disobey a signal from the LSO!  I applied full throttle to abort the landing and took it upon myself to take a "wave off."  As the big 2,000 horsepower Pratt & Whitney responded to the full throttle, the engine torque put me into a slow roll to the left that I could not control.   click onto pix to make bigger

  Andrew pulled back on the stick and managed to hit the water in an upright position.  He wasn't injured, but the left shoulder of his flight suit was snagged on something and he couldn't raise out of his seat.

  "I didn't know until after I saw the pictures...that the plane had broken into two pieces just behind the armor plate and as a result, the heavy engine and cockpit sank almost in a flash.  Just like a lead sinker."

  Using his right hand and arm, Andrew finally freed his flight suit from the torn metal fuselage and kicked away from his cockpit, while deep under the ocean's surface.

  "When I kicked away from the cockpit, I was in  total darkness.  I realized I was free of the plane and I had no sensation of direction.  I couldn't tell which was the way to the surface.  I pulled the toggles on my life jacket to release the little CO2 cartridges that inflate and was quite shocked to learn that it was not inflating!"

  "I didn't realize at the time that the natural buoyancy of my body was taking me toward the surface until I began to feel the life jacket beginning to press against my chest.  As I ascended and the water pressure lessened around the jacket, the CO2 was expanding and inflating my jacket.  I remember the water color changing," becoming lighter, "then I popped to the surface."

   Looking for the Yorktown, he saw at least a quarter mile away, still making 20 knots.  Ships in combat zones were not allowed to stop or slow to the point where they would lose steering control because of the threat of submarines and torpedoes, Andrews explains.

  "There I was alone in a life jacket in the Marina Trench, the deepest part of the whole Pacific Ocean. My life raft sank with the plane, so it was just me and my Mae West, a police whistle (which I keep as a memento), a small survival kit attached to my jacket...and several packages of dye market.  I also had some extra dye marker that I had tied to my life jacket."

  He began releasing some of those packages of dye and blowing his whistle.  "I have no Ingrahamidea how long I had been floating before I saw the bow of a ship coming toward me like the blade of a big sharp knife.  I was reasonably sure it was a destroyer, and I became afraid that they would run right over me."  Like the carrier, the destroyer would not be allowed to lose steering control.

  As Andrew watched the "tin can" approaching, he released more dye and kept blowing the whistle.  "I could make out men along both sides of the bow rails with life rings attached to lines and I knew I had been spotted.  When the ship got close, many life rings and lines were thrown, and they seemed to hit the water all around me just like a big net or a giant spider web."

  He then was helped on deck.  "I don't remember how long I was aboard your ship," he told the Ingraham crew at the reunion.  "I know I did get a shower, flight suit and all, and managed to wash a great part of the dye away."

Message to Yorktown; if you give us ice cream, we'll give you your pilot...

  Sometime that afternoon, the Ingraham pulled up alongside the Yorktown.  The standard reward for rescues was 5 gallons of ice cream.  The Ingraham crew, Andrew said, delayed sending him back to the Yorktown until the reward was promised.

  "Finally, the Yorktown deck officer yelled, 'damn it! Send us our pilot!" and they put me in a breeches buoy and returned me to the carrier."

  When the Breeches buoy was returned to the destroyer it contained the ice cream from the Yorktown.  A flight surgeon pronounced Andrews fit for flight duty the next morning and he flew many more missions.  

 Ensign Andrew saw more action.  The Yorktown later was hit by Japanese kamikaze pilots off Formosa. 

See Victory at Sea "Suicide to Glory" 20 minute movie click here

 Andrews returned to the States in 1945 and was working as a landing signal officer in Florida when Japan surrendered.

  He was eventually accepted as a tin can sailor by the crew of the Ingraham.  His long quest to express his thanks had netted him not only peace of mind, but also dozens of new friends.

Coincidentally, the USS Yorktown and the USS INGRAHAM DD 694 came together again during the 1969 North Atlantic NATO cruise.  Here they are, docked together in Copenhagen Denmark, 26 years after the Andrew crash and rescue.

 




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